Sega Says 'Shinobi' Film Will Be The First Great Ninja Movie, Ever

Will a video game movie be the first legitimately good ninja movie ever made?

Movies based on video games franchises are growing in number and, hopefully, in quality. In 2016 alone, films based on games like Warcraft, Angry Birds, Ratchet and Clank, and Assassin’s Creed will hit theaters. Now, Sega is looking to get in on the action.

The Japanese game maker will partner with producer Marc Platt, Hakuhodo DY Group, and Stories International, Inc. to create feature films from classic Sega properties including Shinobi, Altered Beast, Crazy Taxi, and Virtua Fighter. “We love the Shinobi games and believe that the world of ninjas has never been properly explored onscreen,” Platt said in a press release announcing the deal.

Platt and the executives at Sega seem confident that their Shinobi movie will make history, and doing so won’t be all that hard; they just have to outshine deliciously overwrought and cheesetastic trilogy, Enter The Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, and Ninja III: The Domination. That third one is available on YouTube, for free, by the way.

Does that also mean Sega is hoping to make Shinobi a better film than any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or the candy-colored party ninjas in American Ninja I and II? We’ll keep an eye on the Shinobi film news, to say nothing of Crazy Taxi.